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God is the answer to who created all this and religion is the answer to why did he create us, how he created us and what we are supposed to do. Its purpose is answering these questions and showing us ways of leading life which make us worthy of our creator, a way to reach back to him or a way to repay him. It forms when our ignorance and imagination work upon our knowledge, fears, ignorance and limitations.
To overcome fear or to explain things, we invented a power which protect us, and look after us. We reasoned that the power look after us or protect us because it likes us. And it likes us, because it is the cause of everything and it loves its children. That is the beginning of the concept of a loving god. But when a believer gets into some trouble there is the question of why didn't god help him. Then people may say god is angry with him, he didn't like the way he did something or he didn't like him for not having done something etc. Hence likes and dislikes get attributed to god. This is how rules of god begin to be framed. Then rituals and prayers become a medium of communication with god, and some people take the role of communicators or priests. When these ideas group together we get religions. Later somebody may claim to be the master communicator, the holy one, the messiah etc and then it gets under a central command. But all the while our limitations, fears and ignorance played a central role in guiding us to reach such conclusions. We have religions because of our limitations, fears and ignorance, and since these are common to all of us, most societies have it.